Sunday 29th April, 2007…

At 9.32am I wake up, and take a few seconds to work out where I am and which country I’m in. This is rare these days (the spatial confusion that is, not the waking up). When I first arrived it happened all the time, and at length. Sometimes for what seemed like 10 minutes I would look around me racking my brain trying to gain familiarity from a particular wall or curtain pattern, hoping then to extend that one concrete reality to my life and place in general. But these days such confusion usually only happens when I’ve been out on the razz the night before. And as I wake this morning I have a firm recollection (practically the only recollection at all in fact, including how I found my way home) of the numbers 5.54 on my bedside alarm clock as I stumbled in to bed the ‘night’ before. Luckily, my drunken autopilot slipped a little homeopathic remedy called ‘Nux Vomica’ into my mouth before passing out, and my hangover is manageable.(Take heed… this is truly a miracle hangover cure to beat even a Potter’s House church session).

Cold shower – my first of four in the day. Me and cold showers have a turbulent relationship. Even in the tropics, it can get tiresome summoning up the courage and bracing yourself for that first blast, particularly at 6.30 in the morning every single day. On the other hand, at times like this it absolute bliss.

For a couple of hours I sit on my porch writing a letter. It is scorchingly hot even in the shade, and I desperately will the faint wafts of breeze to flex a bit more muscle. Ice cold water from my rain tank helps though. Honiara tap water is reputedly pretty safe, but it tastes like shit whereas the rainwater that flows from my roof, into my gutter (hopefully not past too many dead geckos or birds) and into the tank behind my house tastes fresh as a mountain stream. I peel and eat a few guava too, crunching the seeds and admiring the beautiful pink flesh. The little Mbokona kids haven’t come calling recently with their tentative calls of "William, mi laek guava", and though I don’t begrudge them scampering up the tree – they always give me a few of the nicest fruits anyway – it’s great once in a while to climb the tree myself and get a proper heap to eat all day.

I have several visitors while I sit on the porch, though I must also have replied halo, moning and baebae fifty times – it being Sunday there is a steady procession of families (though very few sign of daddies) going to church, kitted out in their smartest clothes and armed with umbrellas (para el sol). Little Steven is one of the most entertaining, though only about 3 years old, and we regularly pass the time of day at weekends. I always hear his little voice calling “waetman, eh, waetman” before I see him, and then in a now familiar little routine I call back “halo Steven, halo Steven”, and then, in an an ongoing educational effort to wean him off addressing me directly as waetman, I ask him “who nao name blo mi?”. To which, he proudly replies, "William", before jabbering in either garbled pijin or more likely in one of the Malaitan languages that is his mother tongue – either way I can’t understand a word but give him a thumbs up, a “lukim iu Steven”, and he marches happily on his way.

With my belly full of brown rice and curry, I fall asleep, assisted by my trusty metallic-blue-finish Chinese fan. An hour later I wake sweltering and too hot to sleep, the fan suspiciously quiet beside me. “Shit”, I think “a power-cut”, and for the second time that day I give up trying to sleep anymore.

At the golf club I reluctantly turn down the eager caddies, holding up my tennis racket in apology. We fail to get in to the peaceful little court at the back however, undone by a third friend who failed to show (something to do with tequila shots at 4am I suspect) and who is the one member among us. But anyway, the court is being repaired and they don’t allow singlets (?!) which my Aussie mate (J), being an Aussie, is wearing. I wonder if they would allow vests. We play at the dilapidated old courts beside the Pacific casino instead, shown up by the old Chinese guy and fat local guy whipping the ball back and forth beside us. We don’t do too badly though: the ball only goes in the sea once, rescued by a little posse of kids armed with sticks and stones.

On J’s balcony we sip whisky and ginger and eat steak. His house is swish, with air-conditioning and big screen doors. He also has the biggest barbecue I’ve ever seen. This, he tells me, was written into his contract before coming here, which I find hilarious. It poured with rain while we were eating, and on the road home the toads are out in force. The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who drive to avoid the toads; and those who drive to squash them. There is no middle ground of ignoring them. J, who is giving me a lift home, is a squasher, as he’s from Northern Australia. Toads were introduced there by some wise soul to try to control a pest on the big sugar cane plantations, but with no natural predator (their back is covered in a noxious poisonous slime) they have run amok. They also proved utterly useless in controlling the sugar cane pest – too high up on the plant apparently. I’ve no idea why the toads were brought to the Solomons, but no doubt for an even stupider reason.

I sleep like a baby, until midnight when I receive a call from a certain ningnong in PNG (mi jok nomoa!!). Then back under the mosquito net till dawn.

(I have realised that I always seem to write about ‘something’, be it an aspect of Solomon life or a weekend away, so today I decided to take a different approach and write about ‘nothing’. Since it is hard to capture ‘nothing’ well on a camera, there are no photos I’m afraid. But please accept this photo of me and my mate ‘Meat’ as compensation).